Awesome NYMadness Kick Off – Season 2

Here’s the line-up for the first New York Madness of Season 2. Join us at INTAR (500 West 52nd St. at 10th Ave.) October 11th to experience new short pieces by Cheryl L. Davis, Cecilia Copeland, Ed Cardona, Jr., Fernanda Coppel, Ryan Dowler, Jeffrey James Keyes, Judith Leora, Greg Paul & Lisa Ramirez. We will announce the night’s theme — decided by Guest Artistic Producing Playwright Cheryl L. Davis — one week before the show.

GUEST ARTISTIC PRODUCING PLAYWRIGHT: CHERYL L. DAVIS

Cheryl L. Davis is a co-recipient of the Kleban Award for her work as a librettist, and her musical Barnstormer, written with award-winning composer Douglas J. Cohen, received a Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award, under the auspices of the Lark Play Development Center. Her play about the desegregation of the nations’ school system, The Color of Justice, which was commissioned by Theatreworks/USA, received critical acclaim, including excellent reviews in the New York Times and Daily News, and tours regularly. Her play Cover Girls, which is an adaptation of the Bishop T. D. Jakes novel, was produced and toured by ClearChannel Entertainment. She is the recipient of a commission from the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project. Her work has been read and performed nationally, including at the Cleveland Play House, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Kennedy Center.

Barnstormer, about Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman flyer, has received a developmental production at the Red Mountain Theatre in Birmingham Alabama, and readings at the York Theater Company, the Lark Play Development Center, and Stamford Center for the Arts; it has received a BareBones presentation at the Lark Play Development Center, a reading as part of Hartford Stage’s “Brand:NEW” Festival, and was presented as part of the National Alliance for Musical Theater’s 2008 Festival. Her play Corner Office was a finalist in the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s National Ten-Minute Play Contest.

Cheryl is a musical theater librettist and lyricist, and is an alumna of the Advanced Workshop of the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. She is working on Barnstormer with composer Douglas J. Cohen (No Way to Treat a Lady, The Gig, Glimmerglass). She is also working on Sugar Dumpling with composer C. Colby Sachs; this piece is set during the American Civil War, and is loosely adapted from the short story Boule de Suif by Guy de Maupassant. She has a degree in English and a Certificate in Theatre and Dance from Princeton University, and has studied playwriting with Jean-Claude Van Itallie and Jeffrey Sweet. She was a Dramatists Guild Fellow in 2002, and was mentored by playwright/librettist Alfred Uhry. She is an alumna of the Playwrights’ Lab of the Women’s Project and Productions, of the River Writers Unit of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild and an associate artist of the Milk Can Theatre Company. She is the Vice President of Theater Resources Unlimited, a producers’ networking organization, and is a member of the Board of the League of Professional Theater Women. She is the recipient of a 2009 Writers’ Guild Award for her work as a writer for the daytime dramatic serial “As the World Turns”, and has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on that show as well. She is a practicing attorney in Manhattan and is a partner with the firm of Menaker & Herrmann LLP.

NEW YORK MADNESS FOUNDER & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR:
CECILIA COPELAND

Cecilia Copeland. Full Lengths: ‘The Wicked Son’ A Passover Play, Friday Night Footlights, Directed by John Gould Rubin. Light of Night Reading at New Dramatists, Reading at Arts/West hosted by Emily Prince, upcoming Staged Reading with Charles Goforth, Ana Cruz Kayne, and Florencia Lozano Directed by Padraic Lillis at IATI Theater. riptide Seven Devil’s Finalist, Courting Produced as Stage Left Productions’ New Play Winner. One Women, Produced for SWAN Day 08, Lennis J. Holm Scholarship Playwriting Award. One Acts: Amusement Bomber adapted into a short film with Artemis Productions and a Grant from Metro Screen Australia. Playing KCACTF First Honorable Mention, Produced at University of Iowa 08 and Marietta College 2011. Props Produced by Dark Luna in New York. W.O.W Hostage Produced by 13th Street Repertory Theater. Her Short Works: Words of a Revolutionary, Produced by the Anarchist Theatre Festival of Montreal 2010. Unicorn and Moontanner Girls Published by The International Center for Women Playwrights 2011. She holds a Theater BA with Honors, University of Iowa, and is a Playwriting MFA Ohio University, 2011. Cecilia is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

NEW YORK MADNESS FOUNDING MEMBER: ED CARDONA JR.

Ed Cardona, Jr. is currently working on a play (La Ruta) commissioned by the Working Theater, New York City. Last season he was an Artistic Associate for the Working Theater’s 25th Anniversary Season, which produced American Jornalero, a 1st Stage Production, New York City. Ed received his M.F.A. in playwriting from Columbia University.

NEW YORK MADNESS UNIT WRITER: FERNANDA COPPELFernanda Coppel was born in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, and raised in San Diego California. A poet and playwright, she received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU with a concentration in Playwriting. Her thesis play, Chimi-Changas and Zololft was nominated for the Goldberg Award (2009) and won the Asuncion Queer Latino Festival at Pregones Theater (2009). She received NYU’s John Holden Playwriting Award upon her spring 2009 graduation. Fernanda was in the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship Program at the Juilliard School.

NEW YORK MADNESS FOUNDING MEMBER: RYAN DOWLER

Ryan Dowler is the author of the plays, Spitz/her, The Atheist’s Guide to Sex, and The Gratifications. His short play, Mammals, was named the best ten-minute play in America by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival before touring the U.S. and the UK in 2007. Ryan’s work has been performed at Seattle Repertory Theatre, Hunger Artists Theater, Hyde Park Theatre, DC Source, Cherry Lane Theater, Main Street Stage, and the Kennedy Center in Washington. He is a member of Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theatre.

NEW YORK MADNESS UNIT WRITER: JEFFREY JAMES KEYESJeffrey James Keyes is a playwright and travel writer. Theater: 59E59, Old Vic New Voices, EST, Write Club NYC, Manhattan Rep, and the 78th Street Theatre Lab. Publications: Metrosource, Instinct, The Out Traveler, Stage This, Too!, Italy From a Backpack Education: Fordham University (BA), Columbia University (MFA).

NEW YORK MADNESS UNIT WRITER: GREG PAUL
Greg Paul teaches playwriting at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School at NYU. In 2008 he was a featured playwright at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference for his play, WAIT. He currently has a new musical in rehearsal called The Lady’s Child at Playwright’s Horizon’s Theatre School, which opens in late March. Greg has also recently learned that his latest full-length play, Goblin Universe, is currently a semi-finalist for the 2011 National Playwright’s Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center. He is an alumnus of Ohio University and is thrilled to participate in his second New York Madness.

NEW YORK MADNESS FOUNDING WRITER: LISA RAMIREZ

Lisa Ramirez is an award-winning actor and playwright. Her solo show, Exit Cuckoo (nanny in motherland) was presented Off Broadway by the Working Theater (Directed by Colman Domingo). Other writing credits include; Art of Memory, a dance theatre piece that was presented by Company SoGoNo at 3-Legged Dog in New York. (Conceived and directed by Tanya Calamoneri); Invisible Women-Rise, a collaboration with the Foundry Theatre and Domestic Workers United. Ten domestic workers performed at the historic Riverside Church in New York (Lisa Ramirez directed); TO THE BONE, a new play that was commissioned by the Working Theater about the mostly Latina/immigrant women
who live and work up in Sullivan County, New York’s poultry plants. To The Bone was a 2011 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist and a 2011 Smith Prize Finalist. Currently, Lisa is one of four playwrights in residency at INTAR’s Maria Irene Fornés Hispanic Playwrights in Residency Lab and is writing a new play called All Fall Down.